


5 Things Matt Murdock Knows And The One Thing He Doesn't

by petecastiglione



Category: Daredevil (Comics), Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (as happy as can be with these two), 5+1 Things, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fluff and Angst, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, claire/matt and elektra/matt briefly if you squint, vague mentions of mary walker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-05
Updated: 2017-08-05
Packaged: 2018-12-10 12:55:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11692065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petecastiglione/pseuds/petecastiglione
Summary: Matt is already falling, Frank is just expediting how long it will take before he finally hits the ground. Matt has an aching suspicion that he might like drowning more than desperately trying to stay afloat.





	5 Things Matt Murdock Knows And The One Thing He Doesn't

**Author's Note:**

> unbeta'd, all mistakes are my own. 
> 
> first story in almost a year, i have absolutely no excuses.
> 
> i love these two more than anything and i just want them to be happy
> 
> this was kinda therapeutic to write, it helped me work through some long held grief and guilt. i doubt it will be life changing for any of you, but maybe it'll make you smile??
> 
> also just a heads up: canon typical mentions of blood and violence, drinking (100% legal), and the usual heavy dealings with death and grief

******1\. He got lucky**

 

It’s a lucky thing not to die, even when you vaguely crave death somewhere you’ve tucked away. The body is built to protect, singing the tune of remolded fractures, the dance of scar tissue, the crave of affection, even from a misplaced source.

 

A poster boy for sin, Matt is fortunate the universe still hasn’t caught up with him, though it’s cautioning him to stay down. 

 

Eccentric, theoretical warning signs flash at Matt, he reasons he can’t see those either.

 

Instead, he’s insistent, pleading with Melvin to provide repair to an essential fixture of his suit.

 

“How far away was this guy when he hit you?”

 

“Four or five feet, why?” 

 

“He could've killed you. Any one inch in either direction, your face would be spaghetti. I mean, look at that shot placement.”

 

“I got lucky.”

 

**2\. He's one bad day away**

 

Twenty-two years ago Matt Murdock failed.

 

_It's my fault! It's my fault! I did it, I killed him!_

 

The reverberation of a gunshot and the coinciding crumple of the corpse absorbing the force of the bullet had brought Matt from an anxious, giddy sleep.

 

_I just wanted him to come home._

 

Matt remembers everything from the night that’s a gallery of congealed mistakes immortalized in paint. The most vivid recollection is red, wet and sticky. His father’s blood staining his fingertips as they map his face. A man who meant home.

 

_I_ _wanted him to win. So he did because of me._

 

Sometimes Matt can feel the weight of the gun that killed Jack in his own palm.

 

That affliction that made a home within him at nine years old aches every day, as though to remind him he is nothing more than the horrors he’s lived— and contributed to.

 

_We all pay for our choices, kid._

 

Matt pays every day, he dons the suit to forgive his failures.

 

Matt tries to save them all, but the most harrowing realization is he can’t.

 

Grotto had begged for a second chance, surrounded by conversation lulled with booze and the scent of summer heat.

 

Matt makes a lot of promises, he breaks just as many.

 

Grotto’s last words: _“Why didn't you stop him?”_

 

Matt would’ve gotten on his knees and begged Frank to kick him in the face if it would ease the guilt weighing his conscience.

 

He failed at nine years old and he fails again at thirty-one.

 

But he can’t shake the sick, selfish thought that roots itself in his mind, branching to blossom in every crevice.

 

He’d already chosen Frank before the gun even touched his hand.

 

_You know you're one bad day away from being me._

 

Frank is already unearthing the part of Matt he’d entombed deep in the earth.

 

**3\. He's in too deep**

 

There are paces in life one wishes for the soothing grant of death. The will is lost, the ideation that there is a savior disperses. Elektra is now a wound in Matt’s memory and a tombstone dusted with snow.

 

_Yeah, it always hurts that much._

 

Matt doesn’t feel human anymore, he’s exhausted that designation. Matt’s long abandoned the notion that this is not the end. His bridge of faith in goodness has collapsed, crumbling into the abyss of the causalities of people he’s loved.

 

Hope feels obsolete until it breaks in, pulls him from his bedroom floor, and startles him with the spray of the shower. Matt has exhausted any fight in him, pliant to Frank’s rough handed guidance.

 

They go through the motions Matt’s abandoned in the time since he’d departed the graveyard with Stick.

 

Matt forgets there was a time Frank wasn’t a ghost conjured by the smoke of gunfire, fails to remember that steadfast rhythm is a heartbeat. Matt has tried to stow recollection of Frank’s past, but now it sifts back to him. Frank handles him with a soothing amount of stern he needs to subdue the constraints of grief.

 

There’s nothing gentle about Frank’s care taking, but it eases Matt far better than any resemblance of pity could.

 

There’s still a nuance though. The way Frank fights, conducts himself towards Matt on streets and rooftops, contrasts with the way he pushes Matt towards the couch with softness ebbing his movements.

 

Matt thinks maybe he should’ve accepted Frank’s earlier offering of cooking, especially when Frank unearths his stash of booze. The empty feeling he’s attributed to lack of food and some other lowly ache starts to disperse after he downs half a bottle with little help from Frank.

 

_Loss doesn't work the same for everybody, Red._

 

Matt can still hear the echo of Frank’s anger, and he knows the unfolding outcome of Frank’s loss, but he needs to know how to take the first step. He can’t alone.

 

“How’d you- how’d you go on?”

 

Maybe sober he wouldn’t be inquiring advice from The Punisher, but the tapestry his senses paint is slightly out of focus. What little sense of good judgment he has is faded.

 

“I did. You will too.”

 

Matt’s learned, taught himself to gather his composure, ignore the bruises that stain deeper than the surface. He’s sustained himself on the principle of always getting back up. 

 

Matt thinks the idea of facing the world alone is the most threatening prospect. He _had_ his dad. He _had_ Foggy. He _had_ Elektra.

 

Matt turns over Frank’s words, deciding that maybe the only way to go on is to remind himself that he’s still got a nurse with a well-practiced eye roll, and a blonde, angry, but not enough to materialize into a blade to wound him.

 

It’s that foolish hope, the kind he’ll need to summon in the weeks to come, that makes him think he might have a brunet outlined in scars and defiance as well.

 

Matt is brimming with the kind of bravado only whiskey and grief can offer.

 

The sensible hum in the static of Matt’s thoughts wishes Frank had pushed him away, renounced him, in the same way he rejects Daredevil’s methods.

 

Instead, he plummets with Matt, closes the space between them. A crevice in Matt is temporarily satiated.

 

The way they move is desperate, chaotic, but also tentative and fervent. Their touches reflect something both men have tucked away from the world’s prying eyes. If there are any gaps in the harshness of Frank, he bares them now.

 

Matt is a jumble of jagged pieces left in grief's wake. He's beginning to think that he's better at cutting himself on Frank's broken shards than piecing himself back together.

 

Matt is already falling, Frank is just expediting how long it will take before he finally hits the ground. Matt has an aching suspicion that he might like drowning more than desperately trying to stay afloat.

 

**4\. He misses Frank**

 

Matt is sitting on the rooftop of his building, unwilling to return to his desolate apartment quite yet.

 

He’s surrendered to the noise of the city, a stain, chaos on the front lines of his senses.

 

He’s freed his helmet, gingerly grazing his fingers across a new seeping addition to the scars littering his body. The assaulter he had imposed upon had countered with mania and a blade.

 

He’d had worse.

 

Contributor to said worse experiences is back in Hell’s Kitchen, Matt had found his heartbeat earlier that evening. It’s a begrudging relief that seized Matt. The unwavering rhythm indicated Frank may be a ghost in Matt’s life, but he’s still alive.

 

He is covertly thrilled, and contrastingly conspicuously elated to no longer have to care for a dog that anonymously appeared in Matt’s apartment the morning of Frank’s departure.

 

Frank does many things well, withholding hope from Matt and disappearing among them.

 

Matt had come to expect the vanishing act, but it aches nevertheless.

 

Matt dismantled a barrier Frank constructed, Frank fled to reassemble it. Matt wouldn’t retrace circles for anyone else, not even the woman who had made him red and slipped from him while still in his arms.

 

The moment Matt had anticipated finally enacts itself when a level heartbeat drowns any other noise the Kitchen offers.

 

He draws himself to stand, in place of a greeting. He’d always felt small in contrast to Frank, but never inferior.

 

It’s a wry smile Matt wears as blood trickles from his hairline, his eyes bare hurt beyond physical.

 

He wipes away specks of blood and traces their path to the gravel, “It’s been a while.”

 

It’s been awhile since Hell’s Kitchen's cacophony of noise was paced with that steady heartbeat.

 

It’s been awhile since Matt’s identified a disassembled assault rifle on his living room table.

 

It’s been awhile since Matt awoke from vivid failures and familiar tremors to rugged fingertips tracing the protruding knobs of his spine.

 

“You’re not dead.”

 

The voice that greets him is home. A home engulfed by flames, but Matt wants desperately to live inside. Matt’s proficient enough in decrypting Frank’s forthright comments to distinguish the genuine affection and relief scrawled in the margins.

 

“Not yet, at least.” Matt takes ahold of the helmet to re-secure it.

 

Matt is always drowning in Frank’s presence. It’s been so long and his senses are scrambling to re-catalogue every aspect of the man.

 

The scent of smoke and blood, that can never be scrubbed away, weighs down Matt’s lungs.

 

He had felt a loss at the absence of suffocating.

 

“Where were you?”

 

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to, Red.”  

 

**5\. He loves Frank**

 

Matt is feigning sleep when Frank blunders down the staircase. By the scuffle of his shoes, Matt determines his gait is labored.

 

Time has slurred since Matt was stripped of sight, but he's only been home for a short time. Tonight had been slow, the evil lurking in the Kitchen seemingly comfortable nestled into the woodwork.

 

The heavy metallic scent Franks trails with him like a perfume indicates otherwise.

 

Matt has familiarized himself with the attributes of Frank’s blood, smelt it in the air, felt it on his knuckles, tasted it against his tongue.

 

It's Frank’s blood and only his blood that stains Matt's senses.

 

He crosses the room to follow the sound of Frank collapsing against the couch with a muted groan. Matt can identify the grind of poorly set past fractures, and the fatigued intake of air Frank adopted after a fight.

 

“Shit. What happened?”

 

It's a fruitless effort to inquire about Frank's prior activities. Frank averts any confession to save himself the morality rhetoric from Matt, he's already committed it to memory.

 

Matt's expecting some wise crack in lieu of an honest response, but Frank just cards a bruised hand through his hair. A haircut had been long forgotten, miscellaneous curls fall across his forehead.

 

Concern simmers in the vicinity of Matt's chest, “Frank?”

 

“She was gonna kill you.”

 

“Who, Frank?”

 

“I don't know, she could start fires, Red. Telekinesis shit too.”

 

Matt knows Frank's most frequented safe house surveys Matt's apartment. Frank always has an eye on Matt, gun cocked.

 

“She's screaming about killing you, revenge, awful things, Red. And shit, I think I can take her. She looks about eighty pounds wet, and then we start fighting- never seen anything like it.”

 

“What happened?”

 

Frank exhales, fragmented and heavy with terror.

 

“What?”

 

Frank just gives the slightest shake of his head and swallows hard.

 

Matt reaches a tentative hand from his position opposite Frank, catching his chin and ghosting over the defined battered features. It’s one of those touches with the intention to heal, not bruise. He’s trying to summon the anger that accompanies his morals but he comes up short.

 

“You didn't have to do that, Frank. Not for me.”

 

“Yeah, I did.”

 

The curated image of Frank Castle that Matt has drawn softens, the messy strokes blend together. There’s a shift in the way Matt perceives him now, drawing parallels to an expanse of time they spent in a graveyard together.

 

When Matt stripped away the discarded shell casings and the painted vest, this is the remainder of Frank. Something whispers to him that not a single soul had been allowed this privilege.

 

It’s beautiful, it’s messy. Like setting something alight to watch the flames flicker, and waiting to sift through the ashes.

 

Frank is validation of Matt’s dearest conviction. Frank had watched hell relocate from below to settle into his life, and somehow there is still that glimmer of hope in him. The light that Matt identified in every being, is somehow the brightest in Frank.

 

It’s a truth that had followed Matt around, knocking on his door and bleeding on his couch. Somehow, it took until this moment for Matt to realize, feel Frank’s warmth.

 

He’d dreamt in the shape of Claire, soft edges and a sharp tongue. Instead, he received bullets, barbed wire, and brutality melded and sculpted into a resemblance of a man.

 

It slams against him, overwhelming him far more than any combination of sounds, scents and touch could.

 

The world on fire, _his_ boy on fire blur around the edges.

 

He draws his hand upwards again, to tend to Frank’s wounds, to feel his warmth.

 

Frank flinches. His heart stutters, voice shattering when his palm swallows Matt’s wrist and lowers his hand, “Don’t, _Matt_ don’t.”

 

Not _red_ , or _altar boy_. No, Frank utilizes Matt’s name. It stirs something in Matt’s chest that aches, like a limb that’s fallen asleep finally shaking awake.

 

Frank trembles and his heart abandons any steady pattern, Matt imagines the tears he can’t see, tears carrying away the blood and grime. He thumbs them away from Frank’s hard set jaw.

 

Frank attempts to abort the movement again, brushing away any touch that solidifies his vulnerability.  

 

“ _Hey_.” Matt whispers gently. He follows Frank’s leg until his fingertips skim his swollen and weeping knuckles, interlacing their hands, squeezing momentarily.

 

The gesture translates security, the roots Frank had planted in Matt are guarded.

 

“Red, I, I gotta-” Frank can’t stitch his misshapen request together.

 

“Tell me.” Matt murmurs against the back of Frank’s hand, chapped lips rendering the phrase into a prayer.

 

Frank shakes his head, swallowing gruffly around blood and shame. He extends an arm timidly, voices taunting him, warning that Matt will deny him.

 

Matt has fueled himself on spite, it’s almost gratifying to disprove Frank’s demons when he accepts the reach.

 

Matt moves like a vine, starting with Frank’s fingertips. He wraps himself around Frank, making himself into a makeshift shield of armor. His arms fold around his midsection and he tucks his face into his neck.

 

“ _I’ve got you, I’ve got you_.”

 

Frank makes a soft, strangled noise against Matt’s hair, palms settling on Matt’s hips to steady himself.

 

Matt breathes in his home, gunpowder, and blood. Matt dreads the moment he’ll have to relinquish his grasp. A desperation swells within his chest, weighing him against Frank.

 

Frank will follow suit of every soul Matt’s loved and fade from his clutch, Matt hopes his words will postpone Frank’s dissipation.

 

“ _I love you._ ”

 

**\+ 1, Frank loves him too**

 

Frank isn’t quick to credit the universe after the hands faith had dealt him, but whoever, or whatever is pulling the strings had done a befitting job of finding the two most fucked up people roaming the earth and bonding them.

 

Other soldiers didn't go home to another battlefield when the war ended. Other Catholics didn’t wear their guilt as marred skin.

 

Frank would never get his missing pieces back, and Matt would never find them for him. Rather, Matt seemed to pave a new road beyond the gaps, mending Frank in a way that is privy only to vacant eyes and a sly smile.

 

There were more occurrences in Frank’s life filed under grief than pride or joy, but Matt Murdock is the bruises and scars he’ll never regret.

 

The idiot who leads with his fists, places everyone ahead of himself, and spouts morality nonsense didn’t alter the direction of the earth’s rotation, but he did coax a smile from Frank on occasion.

 

For someone living in the dark, that is blinding.

 

For Frank Castle that is _everything_.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!! let me know how i'm doing in the comments! 
> 
> i'm not really active on tumblr anymore, but come say hi on @karen.foggy on insta!


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